National Breast Cancer Awareness Month: It's Time to Take Control of Your Health

To raise awareness for breast cancer, Tammy is encouraging women to empower themselves with the knowledge to make health care decisions that work for them and their families -  and take advantage of the free preventive health care and cancer screenings available to them. To see the blog she wrote for Women’s Health, click here.

This October, as we join together to raise awareness for breast cancer, it’s important that we take the time to celebrate the progress we have made on women’s health.

Because of the Affordable Care Act, American women are now empowered with more choices and stronger health coverage. And thanks to the health law’s new protections, women are realizing the benefits of health security for the first time, and they are no longer discriminated against by insurance companies simply because they are a woman.

Today, someone’s mother can get a lifesaving mammogram without the fear of high medical bills. And, someone’s sister can take advantage of a cervical cancer screening without worrying how to pay for it. This is important because we know early detection and prompt treatment of cancer is vital to saving lives and increasing survivorship rates.

Women who couldn’t afford to buy birth control now have a guaranteed benefit available with no out-of-pocket cost. This part of the law has already saved women an estimated $483.3 million in out-of-pocket costs in 2013 alone. Also, women now have guaranteed maternity coverage, a benefit that many individual health plans did not include before this historic law was passed by Congress and signed by President Obama.

While some politicians continue their calls for repeal of these critical reforms, it is important that we work together to protect these gains for women and their families.  We also need to do more to strengthen the health security of women.

That is why I am working to reauthorize the National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program. This bipartisan program provides cancer screenings to low-income, uninsured, and under-insured women across America by making investments in states to partner with non-profit groups and local health clinics that coordinate and deliver life-saving screenings to women in need. These screenings include clinical breast exams, mammograms, pap tests, HPV tests, pelvic exams, and referrals for treatment. Since its inception in 1991, this program has provided nearly 11 million screening exams for breast and cervical cancer—including five million mammograms—to underserved women.

All women should have access to the most current breast and cervical cancer detection services. That’s why I’ll continue my work in the U.S. Senate to make sure women have access to the critical care they need to maintain their health.

But we all have a role to play to engage, educate, and empower our friends, family, and neighbors. We can all do or part to raise awareness about breast cancer and advance women’s health.

Not just this month, but every day.

Know the facts, and empower yourself with the knowledge to make the health-care decisions that work for you and your family. Early detection tests for breast and cervical cancer save thousands of lives each year—but many more lives could be saved if more women took full advantage of these tests. Share this information with your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, and the other women in your life. And take advantage of the free preventive cancer screenings that are so essential to your health.

Let us join together as one community and renew our commitment to healthy women—because healthy women lead to healthy families, and healthy families lead to healthy communities.